So far in the 21st century nearly a third of a billion children have been sexually abused, most of them multiple times, some thousands of times. 6 out of 7 are girls. Anything you can do to get this message to as many people as possible will help save abused children all over the world, and maybe even some of the abusers. Please read "Save A Child from Sexual Abuse by 3:15 PM" under "First Time Visitor?" May God bless you and anoint this ministry.

Everyday thousands of children are being sexually abused. You can stop the abuse of at least one child by simply praying. You can possibly stop the abuse of thousands of children by forwarding the link in First Time Visitor? by email, Twitter or Facebook to every Christian you know. Save a child or lots of children!!!! Do Something, please!

Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour

Saturday, 15 April 2017

Health-care Workers Learning to Combat the 'Epidemic' of Human Trafficking

Three heroines to start your day

'We're starting to see a real shift in awareness,'says Dr. Hanni Stoklosa, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston

Human trafficking has been called modern day slavery, and can include sex trafficking, where victims are sexually exploited by someone who is profiting from it. (Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists)

Kas RoussySenior Reporter, CBC

The signs were there.

Multiple visits to hospitals with broken bones and burns. Addicted to opioids and heroin, suffering from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

At 21, Simone Bell was lured into the clandestine world of human trafficking. She was sexually exploited by her trafficker and sold to men from Montreal, to Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara Falls. The ordeal lasted four years before she managed to escape.

That was 10 years ago.

Today, Bell is a survivor and is using her experience through the Hope Found Project, a non-profit program that helps others who've been trafficked. She also speaks to health-care professionals, teaching them how to recognize the signs that someone is being trafficked.

Simone Bell was a victim of human trafficking and now works with other survivors through an organization called The Hope Found Project. (Robyn Miller)

More than social services, more than police services, Bell says that "health care is the place where you're going to see a victim of human trafficking the most."

"I think if someone had spent more time to talk to me, to ask me, to probe more, like, does he make you do anything that you don't want to do? Does any of that involve forcing you to do sex work? What happens with the money?"

Human trafficking has been called modern day slavery. Besides sex trafficking, there is forced labour, too, where victims are coerced into working long hours, with very little pay in industries like massage parlours, nail salons and seasonal farming jobs.

Statistics Canada data between 2009 and 2014 showed there were 396 victims of human trafficking — nearly all of them women, most of them young. Because of the illicit nature of human trafficking and victims' reluctance to report a crime to police, the number of victims could be higher.

Watching for 'red flags'

Most human trafficking victims will need health care at some point in their exploitation, suffering from emotional trauma, physical, and sexual abuse.

A few years ago, Fraser Health in B.C. developed initiatives in how to identify patients who have been trafficked.

Tara Wilkie is a nurse with a Fraser Health team that specializes in dealing with trafficking victims; "We know this is an epidemic," says Wilkie, "and is much greater than we even understand."

This is an epidemic... much greater than we even understand

Tara Wilkie, nurse

Wilkie says many trafficking victims "look like any other patient that comes into the emergency department."

But there are some "red flags" the B.C.-based nurse says. Persons who are trafficked can be going through an illness from a neglected injury, like broken bones, bruises, and burn marks, she says.

Some of the victims also present with branding.

The person comes in to deal with a medical issue "but you notice that they have tattooing that has some sort of insignia or name on it."

There are mental health consequences too like anxiety, thoughts of suicide, substance abuse. Many who are trafficked can also have sexually transmitted infections, genital injuries, pregnancies and miscarriages.

Tara Wilkie is a forensic nurse examiner with the Fraser Health Authority in BC. "We can't expect people to trust us when they've been in the most untrusting relationships", she says about the women who've been trafficked. (Tara Wilkie)

"It may also be that they're being monitored. Like, they have time limits set on when they have to be back. Or we've had people come in with being monitored on their phone through their GPS, or ankle bracelet monitoring."

Wilkie says the continuous checking in with their trafficker, the constant texting or talking on the phone as to their whereabouts, impedes the care that can be provided.

"I had a case just the other day, this exact thing happened and they couldn't continue on with their medical care because they had to report in."

Trafficking can happen across borders, but it can also happen inside a country, like Bell's experience.

She says that prejudice in the health-care system is an issue and women "who have been treated poorly in the health-care system just won't go back and their health suffers."

Boyer says "lots of work needs to be done in medical education on why women are being trafficked, the colonization in Canada and racism."

Raising awareness

The efforts to educate health professionals aren't limited to Canada. Dr. Hanni Stoklosa, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, says most doctors and health-care workers don't have human trafficking on their radar.

But things are changing. "We're starting to see a real shift in awareness," says Stoklosa. "More and more, health-care workers are starting to see trafficking as a real health issue."

In 2013, she co-founded HEAL Trafficking, a global initiative that advocates for survivors of human trafficking.

HEAL stands for Health, Education, Advocacy and Linkage. And so far, it has more than 800 health professionals around the world, including Canada, dedicated to fighting human trafficking from a public health point of view.

Stoklosa views it as "our moral obligation" to ensure that a survivor is first identified and then connected to services they need.

It as "our moral obligation" to ensure that a survivor

is first identified and then connected to services they need

Dr. Hanni Stoklosa, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston

At Fraser Health in B.C., Tara Wilkie says once you've gained the trust of someone who has been trafficked, connecting them to those services can finally begin — by guiding them through the medical system, by starting the conversation with police, or shelters. It's all about bridging the gaps that are hard to navigate on their own, she says.

Looking back to the time she was trafficked, Simone Bell says she didn't even know what the term human trafficking meant.

"Just like everybody else, I thought that was something that happened to people that came from overseas."

Ashamed and afraid people would judge her, Simone would lie and tell nurses she was in a domestic abuse situation.

"If one person had told me what human trafficking was, that would have helped me self-identify and would have let me know that this is a thing that happens to others, that I'm not alone, and I can get help."

Police in France are questioning two men who they say raped a woman and uploaded a video of it on the social media sites Snapchat and Face...

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Great Quotes

Unless our hearts are filled with pain for the state of our world, we have not begun to sense the heart of God. Charles Price - Living Truth

Islamic Insanity:

“I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible…impossible…for any human being to read the biography of Mohammed and believe in it, and then emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person.”- Syrian Psychiatrist Dr. Wafa Sultan

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Prayer

“There is nothing thrilling about a labouring man’s work, but it is the labouring man who makes the conceptions of the genius possible; and it is the labouring saint who makes the conceptions of his Master possible.

You labour at prayer and results happen all the time from God’s standpoint. What an astonishment it will be to find, when the veil is lifted, the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you had been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ.”